Why Research and Development Is the Key to Your Business’s Innovation
Business innovation is a tricky subject that is hard to cover. This is usually due to the wide spectrum that innovation covers. Do you improve your products and services through the use of analytical data and monitoring your consumers, or do you take a shot in the dark with a trial-and-error method?
We’re going to be covering the importance of research and development and discussing the many different applications it has for your business.
We can’t cover every single component of what makes research and development a vital department to add to your business, but we can go through many of the major advantages and explain the role it will play in your business’s success.
Trendsetting vs. Innovating
One of the first points to compare is trendsetting vs innovating. They are two different things and it’s important to understand the differences between both if you want to grow your company.
Let’s use the iPhone X as an example. In terms of innovation, this product offers nothing new that hasn’t been seen in previous smartphones.
In fact, the original iPhone is arguably one of the most influential devices in the history of technology, but none of its ideas were inherently new or revolutionary because they have been appearing in competitors for years. Can Apple really be called innovators in this case, or are they just trendsetters?
Since the products have features that aren’t necessarily new to the industry, Apple can’t really be called innovators in this sense. Sure, they might be one of the first to truly compile all of that technology into a single package, but it doesn’t mean they are the ones that innovated in the first place.
Research and development focus not on existing solutions and features, but new ones. To innovate is to break the boundaries of what we perceive as possible or practical and then apply it to our products or services in order to improve the customer experience.
Trendsetters, on the other hand, don’t necessarily create the technology or the products that they offer. They just have a large enough voice in the industry to bring it to a wider audience, and that’s when customers perceive them to be the founders of the “first” to have something.
So how does this apply to your company? Simple; innovation doesn’t always mean a new product or a new success. Your ideas are going to be stolen and even if you patent something, you probably won’t have enough money to truly make it a worldwide success and you will need to rely on third-party services to help you grow your idea into a fully functional product or service.
When you focus on research and development, you do it to create competition in the industry which is always a healthy thing. Creating competition means that there is more choice for the consumer so it grows the potential audience that you’re appealing to and it helps to grow the industry as a whole.
Funding Your Research and Development
Research and development sadly don’t come cheap. While much of the research and development can be handled in-house, you’ll still need to rely on third-party suppliers such as Hera BioLabs to give you the tools and materials you’ll need to innovate. People often think that funding is what determines the success rate of a research project, but it’s only one half of the story.
The other half is finding the right talent and having the right aims in order to promote growth. Not everyone is going to be on the same page in your research and development team and you’ll need to find a common interest to unite their talents and motivation. Money alone doesn’t make progress.
As most entrepreneurs know, happy employees mean a motivated workforce and that in turn means that your company grows faster and finds better solutions.
A research and development team is all about optimising efficiency and allowing talent to grow when possible. This does often mean that you’ll be taking in people that don’t have much experience working with groups or fresh university graduates that have written a promising paper.
In short, funding your research and development team can be a huge gamble. You can either recruit young talent that is full of unique ideas, or older and more experienced researchers that come at a price premium due to their knowledge and expertise.
Knowledge is Power
One of the key ingredients for innovation is knowledge. Information that you get from research and development can be used in a number of different ways. It depends greatly on the statistics gathered, but it’s safe to say that the numbers you manage to pull from a successful research project could be vital to the success of your next product or service.
Research and Development
Research and Development are all about maximising your efforts in order to accumulate power. It boils down to what you know, how you plan to use that information and in what way you can utilize that information in the future.
Without extensive sets of data and test results, there isn’t much you can do to improve your products and services. However, when you take an extensive look at the data you have accumulated from your research and development, it’s possible to find ways to improve your business to appeal to more customers.
So to conclude, research and development are just one of the many ways to help you gather large sets of data that are useful to your business’s operation.
Whether it’s to help you grow a product or to help you improve a particular service in your business, innovating your business and discovering new ways to provide for your audience is the reason why research and developments are such a vital component in any modern-day business.
